Category: AFL – Australian Rules

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The Nick Watson moment came on Dustin Martin’s day. It was Dusty’s 300th, complete with pop-up barbers, the opening goal of the game and the final significant act of his career, when he walked to all four corners of the centre square and acknowledged his crowd. Michael Willson’s photo of Martin exiting the MCG perfectly captured the man, the moment and the mood.

It had been a rocky debut season for Watson until that day in June 2024, with injuries, tardy goalkicking and stints in the VFL. Halfway through the first quarter, he anticipated a spilling ball, collected it at full speed, took a bounce, absconded around the boundary line and hit up Dylan Moore with a perfectly weighted kick. It was one of those moments where you were left in absolutely no doubt that the person you were watching was going to be a great footballer.

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Which Brisbane turns up on any given day can be a mystery but after a qualifying final wake-up call they were too good for Adelaide in every area

They’re the little girl with the little curl. When they’re bad, the Brisbane Lions are horrid. When they’re good, they’re unstoppable. There’s a familiar pattern to how this plays out. They need a wound, a spur, a thrashing. They need a blast from the coach, usually delivered via the press conference. They need a game at the Gabba or the MCG, not a snoozer at the Docklands, or Carrara or the Sydney Showgrounds. And most of all, they need to know that they’ll be eliminated if they lose.

They need to be fully invested, right from the opening minute. There’s usually an early pressure act that they celebrate collectively – a smother, a lunging spoil, the type of thing that had been entirely absent the week before. There’s usually a high pressure rating, a measure that is as inexplicable as the score review system, but which is always a good indication of what side of the bed the Lions have woken up on.

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• The Lions defeat the Crows by 21.18 (144) to 13.13 (91) in AFL semi-final

• Reigning premiers to meet Hawks in preliminary final at the MCG

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Seven scintillating minutes set the tone as Brisbane kept their AFL three-peat hopes alive with a 53-point defeat of Adelaide at the Gabba.

The Lions, chasing a third straight premiership, will face Hawthorn in an MCG preliminary final after a rollicking 21.18 (144) to 13.13 (91) Saturday night semi-final triumph.

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• Dockers defeat Cats 18.12 (120) to 16.10 (106) in semi-final

• Minor premiers to meet Sydney in preliminary final

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There’s been some pandemonic nights at Optus Stadium, but nothing that could match this. Fremantle is through to a preliminary final after a semi of the highest quality and the utmost tension. It was simultaneously free-wheeling and nerve-jangling – both high scoring and high pressure. It activated Wharfie Time for just the second time this year, but it wasn’t really needed. The noise was cacophonous, the tension excruciating and the result ultimately just.

There was a period midway through the third term where it looked like Geelong might skip away with this game, just like they did against Carlton a week earlier, just as they have so many times in big games over the years. The spring-heeled Ollie Henry was marking everything, Dangerfield looked menacing, and their fleet of runners were finding space and carving the Dockers up. But if this Fremantle side is truly the one to re-write history, the time-on period in the third quarter will be one of the defining reference points. In particular, Luke Jackson and Andrew Brayshaw were pivotal in this period, blunting the Cats at centre square stoppages and surging the ball forward. They kicked four goals in seven minutes and from that point the game was on their terms.

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Luke Sayers says he accepts Cate Sayers did not post photo of his genitals as she says settlement closes ‘painful and difficult chapter’

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The embattled former AFL club president Luke Sayers has apologised to his former wife for the harm he caused as her defamation case over a lewd photo settled.

Lawyers for Sayers, the immediate past president of the Carlton football club, read out the apology in the Victorian supreme court on Friday after indicating the settlement.

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Every sacked coach reacts differently. Some turn up in civvies and conduct what is essentially a job interview for their next role. Some know their fate 12 months out, grit their teeth and toe the company line. For some it’s a relief, a chance to take a deep breath for the first time in years. Some, like Michael Voss, are let go after months of bad losses. Others, like Simon Goodwin, are sacked 48 hours after an 83-point win.

Every sacking is different from the club’s perspective too. When Brad Scott and North Melbourne parted ways, his chairman said the coach was “nothing short of selfless and honourable, as befitting his character”. When David Noble exited in 2022, president Sonja Hood rejected suggestions he’d been sacked. “We came to an agreement that we would terminate the contract or that the contract would end,” she said.

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Chris Fagan tried to warn his Brisbane players the game would be tough but he doubts his words sunk in

Chris Fagan was seething on Saturday night. His team had lost for just the second time since May. They’d lost to a club whose chair had just a few weeks ago declared their season “torpedoed”. But Fagan has been around football long enough not to buy into that. He spent most of the buildup to the qualifying final warning his players and the commentariat that Sydney shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Fagan knows his own players inside out, and he knows they’re at their most vulnerable when the task before them seems straightforward. He can tell early whether the imperial Brisbane has turned up, or the complacent Brisbane. He says he can tell by their reaction times, by their energy and urgency at stoppages, by whether his defenders are on their heels or their toes. Sydney had six goals on the board before Lachie Neale had touched the ball, and Fagan’s careworn face said it all.

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• Crows defeat Bulldogs 14.6 (90) to 9.14 (68) in elimination final

• Adelaide head to Brisbane for semi-final against reigning premiers

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Adelaide have survived a late scare to end the Western Bulldogs’ season with a nerve-jangling 22-point elimination final victory.

The Crows led by 19 points at three-quarter time but slipped behind in the final term, before prevailing 14.6 (90) to 9.14 (68) on Saturday night.

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• Minor premiers suffer first home defeat of the season

• Hawks never let up after first half onslaught

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Nick Watson produced his usual bag of wizardry tricks and James Sicily led a rock-solid defence as Hawthorn ended Fremantle’s perfect home record in brutal fashion with a stunning 32-point qualifying final win in Perth.

The Hawks kicked six goals to one in a dominant first half in Thursday night’s clash to set up the 10.12 (72) to 5.10 (40) win and secure a home preliminary final.

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The minor premiers face Hawthorn with the gap between first and fourth on the AFL ladder having noticeably narrowed over the past decade

For three decades, the AFL’s minor premiers received the McClelland Trophy. Now they get squeaky bum syndrome. Prior to the introduction of the pre-finals bye in 2016, there was a nine-year stretch where the minor premiers beat the fourth-placed team in the qualifying final. The average winning margin in those games was 45 points.

The bye saw a marked shift, however. In 2016, GWS bashed and bludgeoned the top-placed Swans at ANZ Stadium. Three years later, Collingwood jumped ladder leaders Geelong. They nearly did it again in 2022, narrowly going down in one of the great finals of the modern era. The top-placed Pies only just scraped through against Melbourne the following year, in a game remembered for Brayden Maynard’s high blow that ended Angus Brayshaw’s career. In 2024, the fourth-placed Giants lost to Sydney after being five goals up in the second half. And last year, Collingwood rolled into Adelaide like a band of hired assassins and beat the top-placed Crows.

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When Alastair Clarkson was appointed coach of North Melbourne in August 2022, he was the largest figure in the sport. Ange Postecoglou had advised him to take on the most challenging role he could find. At that stage, the Roos were a puddle of a team. Jason Horne-Francis couldn’t get out of the place quickly enough.

At Clarkson’s first media conference, he spoke of a club that helped steer him on the right path after his brother had been killed in a car accident. The industry was pitiless, he said. But there were good people involved too, and the occasional moments of grace. His new president, the polar opposite of Jeff Kennett at Hawthorn, ran more than 100 programs supporting kids from non-English speaking backgrounds. The North Melbourne presidency, Dr Sonja Hood says, was her “weird job”. Kane Cornes described her as “uninspiring”. But she held her nerve, stared down the industry and got her man.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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The Blues look well stocked for years to come after Jagga Smith and Harry Dean were standouts in their AFL wildcard final win over the Demons

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Melbourne ran on to the MCG to a pyrotechnics show, lashings of Bon Scott and a cacophony of boos. It was notionally Melbourne’s home game, but it was Carlton’s crowd. The Demons were the higher ranked team and had the songs after goals, but the Blues were the ones riding the wave and had the game’s tune.

For the first hour however, it seemed as though the brand of football Blues coach Josh Fraser has cultivated may not hold up in a knockout game. When Melbourne moved the ball, they moved it with purpose, with precision and with speed. Carlton’s ball movement was more laboured and slipshod. Their entries into the forward 50 were as shallow as the boundary umpires’ throw-ins. Blues captain Patrick Cripps was forced to ruck at times, which was like watching Daniel Day-Lewis bob up in an episode of Hey Dad. Most of their early goals came through sheer will. The Blues bludgeoned their way to parity, but the Demons still looked the superior team.

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• Carlton beat Melbourne 10.14 (74) to 7.13 (5) at MCG

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Carlton claimed victory over Melbourne in front of 91,733 fans at the MCG in their AFL wildcard match to extend their fairytale resurgence into an elimination final clash with Geelong.

Under Josh Fraser, the Blues fought back from a 1-8 start to the season that cost Michael Voss his job, to first make the wildcard round in 10th place, then reach the elimination final.

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Barrister for former St Kilda player says he will appeal both the sentence and the conviction for unprovoked assault in May 2025

Former AFL star Nicky Winmar has been jailed for six months for attacking a woman in a violent assault.

Winmar, 60, dropped his head as he was sentenced in Bendigo magistrates court over the May 2025 assault against a woman at Cohuna in northern Victoria.

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Remember the Geelong concussion waiver scandal? Feels like about a dozen outrages ago, doesn’t it? The Cats president, Grant McCabe, raised the issue on the weekend, putting the onus back on the AFL to come clean on how much they knew about Jake Kolodjashnij’s “voluntary assumption of risk” agreement. By then, the alleged events at the Pullman Hotel had cannibalised the news cycle. By Monday, a country Victorian pub was issuing statements about player behaviour. By Tuesday, Geelong was newsworthy for the potential acquisition of Zak Butters, Toby Greene and Rowan Marshall.

When it comes to the concussion story, both Geelong and the AFL have employed some classic crisis management strategies – deny, dilute, diffuse, distract, delay. Both parties initially denied the existence of the agreement, and pushed back on the journalist who broke the story. They then sought to confuse the issue as much as possible, dropping the word “complex” into every second sentence, hoping that the general public would be so bewildered at what this was actually about that they’d quickly lose interest. They diffused the situation by framing it as an administrative oversight rather than a question of ethics and leadership. Sydney took care of the distraction part of the strategy. And engaging James Peters KC to examine Geelong’s evidence continues to delay the findings.

This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions

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